Fareed Zakaria commentary: Moderates don’t do well in the Middle East

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Monday August 18, 2014 6:01 AM

Hillary Clinton was expressing what has become Washington’s new conventional wisdom when she
implied, in her interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in
The Atlantic, “moderates” might have prevented the rise of the Islamic State. In fact,
America has provided massive and sustained aid to the moderates in the region.

Remember, Islamic State was created in Iraq and grew out of that country’s internal dynamics.
Over the past decade, the U.S. helped organize Iraq’s “moderates” — the Shiite-dominated government
— gave them tens of billions of dollars in aid and supplied and trained their army. But, it turned
out, the moderates weren’t that moderate and as they turned authoritarian and sectarian, Sunni
opposition movements grew and jihadi opposition groups like Islamic State gained tacit or active
support. This is a familiar pattern throughout the region.

For decades now, American foreign policy in the Middle East has been to support “moderates.” The
problem is that there are actually very few of them. The Arab world is going through a bitter,
sectarian struggle that is “carrying the Islamic world back to the dark ages,” says Turkish
President Abdullah Gul. In these circumstances, moderates either become extremists or they lose out
in the brutal power struggles of the day. Look at Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and the Palestinian
territories.

The Middle East has been trapped for decades between repressive dictatorships and illiberal
opposition groups — between Hosni Mubarak and al-Qaida — leaving little space in between. The
dictators try to shut down all opposition movements, and the ones that survive are vengeful,
religious and violent. There was an opening for moderates after the Arab Spring in 2011 and 2012
but it rapidly closed.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood had a chance to govern inclusively, but it refused. Without
waiting for vindication at the polls, Egypt’s old dictatorship rose up and banned and jailed the
Brotherhood and other opposition forces. In Bahrain, the old ruling class is following the example
of the Egyptian regime — while the Saudi monarchy funds the return to repression throughout the
region. All this leads to an underground and violent opposition. “Because of the culture of
impunity (from the government), there is a new culture of revenge” on the street, Said Yousif
al-Muhafda, head of documentation at the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, explained to Al-Monitor,
a news and analysis website.

In the Palestinian territories, Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority in the West
Bank, is indeed a moderate. But notice that the Israeli government and the West have happily
postponed elections in the West Bank year after year; they know who would win. Moderates don’t do
well in an atmosphere of despair and war.

Perhaps the biggest stretch of all is the idea that the moderates could win in Syria. It is one
thing to believe that moderates can organize well, make their case and get to the polls. But the
Bashar al-Assad regime turned its guns on the opposition from the start. In that circumstance, the
groups that are going to gain power are those who will fight back with zeal and ferocity. Consider
the new head of the Western-backed Syrian opposition, Hadi al-Bahra, who now urges more support for
moderates like him. A successful businessman of decency and sincerity, he left Syria in 1983 — more
than 30 years ago! How likely is it that people like him can take over from those on the ground who
are fighting and dying?

And who are those people? After the Syrian struggle began, the Associated Press reported that
the opposition to the Assad regime could be characterized as “poor, pious and rural.” Describing
these people in Aleppo, it said, “They frame the fight in a religious context and speak of
martyrdom as something they wish for.” University of Oklahoma scholar Joshua Landis points out that
of the four largest and most effective rebel forces in Syria, not one espouses democracy.

In an excellent essay for
The Washington Post, George Washington University professor Marc Lynch cites careful
historical studies that demonstrate that in a chaotic, violent civil war such as Syria’s, U.S.
intervention would have had little effect other than to extend and exacerbate the conflict. “Had
the plan to arm Syria’s rebels been adopted back in 2012,” Lynch writes, “the most likely scenario
is that the war would still be raging and look much as it does today, except that the United States
would be far more intimately and deeply involved.”

Asserting that the moderates in Syria could win is not tough foreign-policy talk, it is a naive
fantasy with dangerous consequences.